Video tour of 60 Richmond Road, Macomb, IL

I recently learned how to shoot and edit videos tours of listings. Here's my latest effort:



Though still very much a novice, I'm hoping this is one more tool I can use to help sellers.

New source for rental info

As of this week, there's a new source to help in the search for Macomb rentals: rentmacomb.com. The site only launched yesterday but already has quite a few properties posted.

Rentmacomb.com offers a way for visitors to browse available rentals according to price, number of bedrooms, or name of the landlord. Each listing includes a small Google map, showing exactly where the rental property is located in town.

What impresses me about the site (aside from its Google-esque clean and minimalistic interface) is its thoroughness, even this early on in its existence. (Today I counted over 60 properties on the site, easily twice the number you'll find in a local newspaper's classified ads on an average day.) The site's owners, Jacob and Marcia Thurman, invite all Macomb landlords to list their rental properties for free, either by (1) creating a user account and performing the data entry themselves or (2) filling out a form with the necessary information and snail-mailing it back to the Thurmans. Landlords have nothing to lose, so they participate, and that only helps the database grow more complete. (Because even a "free" endeavor like this has to make some revenue, the Thurmans run ads on the right side of each page on the site.)

In a letter to landlords this summer -- asking for their participation in the project -- the Thurmans explained that they were motivated to create rentmacomb.com after spending several months stuck on their own frustrating rental search. "We did eventually find a house that we like," they wrote, "but we also found that despite the very high number of rental properties in Macomb, information about what is available is hard to come by.

"In short, finding a place to rent in Macomb is a lot more difficult than it needs to be."

Earlier this spring, I wrote about the rentals list our RE/MAX office keeps on file -- an informal list of every currently available rental we know about. That list has never been all-inclusive, and I'm always looking for ways to make it better. As soon as I saw rentmacomb.com go live yesterday, I typed it in bold and added it to the top of our list. Maybe our office will have some luck steering landlords and tenants the Thurmans' way.

New grocery store for Macomb?

Ever since Thompson Food Basket at 1600 W. Jackson, Macomb, closed in the late 1990s, this large commercial building has been sitting empty:


Macomb's west-side residents have been without a grocery store ever since. There was always talk that construction of some nearby apartment complexes would prove a tipping point for a grocery store to return to the building, but that never quite happened. Instead, a group called The Crossing bought the property for $755,000 in December 2006 and announced something completely unexpected: They plan to turn the place into a church. The first service is scheduled for later this fall.

Hopes for a grocery store in this part of town haven't died, however. A few weeks ago, this building across the street -- at 1601 W. Jackson -- sold for $565,000:


The seller, Brenner Furniture Company, had been a longtime fixture in Macomb. Now it's out of business. The new owner, S & W Real Estate Management, is currently looking for tenants. Will one of them be a grocery store? We'll probably know later this year.

Definitions, please

One of the things I like about practicing real estate is that it lets me enjoy some of the best aspects of my old job -- as a teacher. Explaining things (and, with luck, being a little helpful in the process) can be a fun gig.

Say, for example, that you see some titles after an agent's name and wonder how qualified this person really is. So how about some definitions?

Some basics:

real estate agent - Simply means the person is licensed to sell real estate. Doesn't tell you anything more specific about how much training he or she has.

salesperson - In Illinois, this person has passed a 45-hour classroom course. But this person can't own a real estate office. (You need a broker's license for that.)

broker - In Illinois, this person has passed the 45-hour salesperson course and the 75-hour broker course. This person can own a real estate office.

Realtor - A real estate agent who has paid dues to join the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the largest trade group of real estate agents. Only agents who have paid NAR dues can call themselves Realtors. (That's why you'll often see the word "Realtor" accompanied by a symbol indicating a registered trademark; NAR owns the term.)

Good real estate websites, part 2

In an earlier post, I mentioned some of the best real estate sites to visit if you're looking to find a house. What about the "for sale by owner" sites? Aren't they good, too?

Sure, and I encourage you to visit them.

But right now, the for sale by owner (FSBO) market is fragmented. There isn't one site where you can view all FSBO listings in a given city or ZIP code. (Not a surprise, really. Each FSBO website is run by a different company, and each one wants to make money off folks looking to sell their homes.)

I recommend starting with realtor.com if you're the sort of person who wants to visit one site and view as much real estate as possible. But if you're an inquisitive and thorough sort, you'll want to get a complete picture of everything by also visiting some FSBO sites.

There are some cities where FSBOs have a huge market share -- sometimes as much as 30% of all the houses for sale. That's not the case in west-central Illinois, and on most of the sites listed below, you'll be lucky to find one or two houses for sale in a given town.

One final note: I ran my estimates (included below) on what it would cost to run ads in west-central Illinois. These numbers may not hold true for bigger markets in more metropolitan areas of the U.S.

To the list!

Good FSBO sites:
forsalebyowner.com -- Definitely seems to be the most popular of the FSBO sites, and my Alexa toolbar ranks it 9,113 -- meaning that, at this moment in time, Alexa considers it the 9,113th most popular site on the Internet. (Alexa ranks yahoo.com #1, msn.com #2, and google.com #3.) Rankings aren't a flawless science, but I do think they matter; if you're going to sell your house on your own, you want it to be posted on a website people actually visit.

If you want to sell your house, paying $199 at forsalebyowner.com lets you post it on their site indefinitely; if you pay $249, they'll also give you a yard sign. They also offer an intriguing feature: For $349, they'll include the aforementioned stuff, plus allow you unlimited access to their toll-free real estate consultation line. (I'm not sure how great the advice on their consultation line actually is, but then again, I imagine some people would tell you that they've received rotten advice from real estate agents hired for a lot more than $349.) For $599, forsalebyowner.com will post your house on yahoo.com and some other websites, too.

owners.com -- Ranked 30,701 by Alexa. $49.95 lets you post your house on their site until it sells. $79.95 does the same thing, plus a yard sign. $179.95 is everything plus a virtual tour. They also offer a separate package: $377 lets you post your house in the local multiple listing service (MLS) -- the database of properties overseen by real estate agents in that area. (I like this idea of MLS a la carte, but it's been highly controversial in some parts of the U.S., and lawsuits have been filed because of it. I plan to write more about all this in a future post.)

homesbyowner.com -- Ranked 49,529 by Alexa. This site will give you a free (!) listing and one photo. $79.99 will give you a yard sign and allow you to post up to five photos. $129.99 allows you up to 20 photos and a virtual tour.

fsbo.com -- Ranked 58,620 by Alexa. $69.95 posts your house on their site for nine months, and for $10 more, they'll throw in a yard sign. Or, for $499, they'll post your house in the local MLS.

byowner.com -- Ranked 141,414 by Alexa. $249 to list your house (with six photos) until it sells. $49 extra for yard signs.

And then there are the folks who go the FSBO route and never do anything more than stick a sign in the front yard. Obviously, you won't find those houses on any websites, and often the only way to stumble onto them is by driving up and down streets in a given town. But maybe Google's team of experts can come up with a infrared-like map that can detect all yard signs (both the FSBO and real estate agent kind) from low-earth orbit, then post the results on an easy-to-navigate Google site. Why not?

The rentals list

At our office, I spend most of my time helping people who want to buy or sell real estate. But every week or so, I get a call about something else -- and the question I'm asked is always the same:

"Do you guys have any rentals?"

That's when I mention our list.

Our office doesn't actually own any rentals or perform property management for landlords. Nonetheless, we realize that many people, especially those new to the area, need places to rent and don't know the names of some of the local landlords to call. That's why we maintain and distribute a list of every currently available rental we know about. We give out the list free to anyone who wants it.

The list isn't exhaustive -- though we'd like it to be -- and doesn't rival the Chicago version of Craigslist. But for many people, the list provides a helpful start to the housing search. (Other good sources of rentals include the classified sections of the Macomb Eagle and Macomb Journal, our local newspapers.)

Because Macomb is by far the largest city in the area, most of the rentals on our list are located there. Occasionally we also get some rentals in the smaller towns nearby; Good Hope has frequently claimed a spot on the list with a rental or two. But you'd be surprised how often people call asking for rentals in specific towns (like Bushnell, Colchester, Table Grove, etc.), and we rarely have anything that specific. We hope to improve in that regard.

If you're a local landlord and looking for a tenant, call and tell us to put your name, phone number, and available rental address on the list. We'll do it for free. And we'll leave the information on the list indefinitely -- until you tell us otherwise.

Lately I've started getting more creative with the list. One client just bought a house and told me that he's looking for a roommate. No problem, I said. We added his info to the list. No word yet if he's had any leads, though I'm optimistic he'll get at least a few inquiries.

I can't claim credit for coming up with the original idea for the list; other agents started it long before I joined the office in 2004. But I'm happy to carry on the good work. After all, if we're not helping people, we're not doing our jobs.

A Macomb zoning primer

You can't escape the zoning battles in Macomb, and that's true even if you don't practice real estate for a living.

Up until a few years ago, you could take any house in Macomb and rent it out to up to four unrelated college students. Didn't matter what the zoning was -- single-family, multi-family, whatever -- you could pretty much do whatever you wanted with your house, and there was little the city could do about it. (Loud underage parties at 2 a.m. were an exception, at least if such a house sat across the street from sleep-respecting locals.)

Then a few years ago (around 2002, I think), everything changed. A group called Project HANDS (Homeowners and Neighborhood Development Strategies) lobbied Macomb's city council to come up with new rules regarding how many college kids you could pack into a rental house.

The new zoning categories set the following standards:

R1 (single-family): No more than two unrelated tenants, no matter how many bedrooms the house may have.

R2 (single-family): Same as R1.

R3 (multi-family): Possibly up to six unrelated tenants, but only if the building's configured as some sort of duplex and has two kitchens.

R4 (multi-family): Up to six unrelated tenants, depending on the number of bedrooms. (Think of your typical college party house.)

Note: The City of Macomb considers "related" students to be students who are married, siblings, or first cousins. Second cousins or relations that stretch beyond that aren't allowed.

When this zoning change took effect, there were some R1 and R2 houses that were "grandfathered in" and allowed to continue being rented out to four college students. But these properties have to continue to be used as rentals in an ongoing fashion in order to retain their grandfathered-in status. If they go at least 12 months without doing so, they lose their grandfathered-in status forever and can't get it back. (I compare this to the extinction of the dinosaurs; grandfathered-in properties aren't being created, but they can be destroyed.)

How does the new zoning classification system work?

Let's say you have a four-bedroom house in the northwest quadrant of town, right across the street from Western Illinois University. The house is zoned single-family; it wasn't grandfathered in. How many college students can live there?

Only two, if they're unrelated.

There are exceptions, but they're rare. You might have two brothers who want to live together, and then they'd be allowed to have an unrelated friend as a third tenant. Or you could have a family of triplets who want to live together, and they'd be allowed to have an unrelated friend as a fourth tenant. But only in such exceptions could you hope to fill out and actually use all four bedrooms of a single-family house. That means most single-family houses (which constitute the majority of housing in Macomb) are off-limits to what college students want to do with them. This can be good or bad, depending on whether you're (1) a college student looking for a place to live or (2) a local who doesn't want college students trashing up the neighborhood.

As a result, anything with R3 or R4 zoning has had a premium placed on it. And there aren't many R3 or R4 properties in Macomb, as you can see on the city's zoning map:

http://www.cityofmacomb.com/pdf/zoning_A.pdf

(The file's pretty big, so give it a few seconds to load after you click the link.)

What's especially noteworthy are the colors in the northwest quadrant, near WIU. The dark brown color signifies R4 properties. A good percentage of this is land owned by the university and used for residence halls, but there are some privately owned R4 lots off to the south and east, such as a solid stretch along West Murray and West Pierce.

And then there's the island -- a pinkish R2 zone that encompasses mostly Chandler Boulevard, Orchard Street, and Stadium Drive. It's all zoned single-family. And it's completely surrounded by R4 properties.

If there are zoning battles in Macomb, that island's on the front lines.

Good real estate websites, part 1

What's the best website to use when trying to find a house? I'm asked that quite a bit, and my answer's simple: realtor.com.

What makes realtor.com so great is that it's an all-in-one site, meaning that it has all houses for sale by all agents in a given market -- and every house has at least one photo. Right now there's nobody else doing this (though many companies are trying to join the game).

Real estate agents don't have to pay to post their listings to realtor.com -- it's completely free. That means you can go to realtor.com and search an entire town and see literally everything for sale through agents there. When you do, you'll find that some houses have special headlines and multiple photos; these are listed by agents who've paid realtor.com advertising fees to dress up things a bit.

Other good real estate sites:

homes.com -- Like realtor.com, they list everything on the market. The catch: Apparently, only agents who've paid to advertise with homes.com get photos on their listings. (All other listings have boxes with the words "photo not available."

Yahoo real estate -- Uses the same data as homes.com.

zillow.com -- Started allowing agents to post their listings, but only a few have done so at this point.

macomb.com/realestate -- This is actually a directory of real estate offices based in Macomb, Illinois, and operated by Infobahn Outfitters, a local Internet service company. Infobahn created and services our own office's website, so I'm a little biased, but what I like is how Infobahn doesn't discriminate. They list nearly every real estate office in the area -- as long as that office has an email address. This page also ranks highly in any Google search of "real estate Macomb IL." Many clients have told me how much they appreciate this page, especially if they're from outside the area and want a quick overview of the offices that serve the Macomb market.

historicproperties.com -- A specialty site for really old houses. I've been surprised to learn recently that there are many buyers out there looking for highly specific types of structures (e.g., 1890 Victorians), and that they're willing to move a considerable distance -- sometimes hundreds of miles -- to buy and live in them. The folks who run this site really seem to know what they're doing.

Chapter 1

Is is really possible to write a blog about real estate in a small town in west-central Illinois? I'm about to find out, I guess.

What will be posted here? Real estate stuff, of course, but in a way that's specific to our market. You can find marketwide, macro-themed real estate stories (no doubt about how the real estate market has hit the skids) in The Wall Street Journal or some other national publication.

But for info about some other important things -- like the housing shortage in our area, Macomb's multi-family zoning imbroglio, or $5,000/acre patches of black dirt -- this is the place.

This site's designed to be interactive, so please feel free to leave me feedback.

Cheers,
Nick

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